There's a lot to like about this book, and that's mostly to do with the narrator. Laura-the-character is immensely relatable, and Laura-the-author writes in accessible, evocative prose. She's particularly good at describing the natural world, for instance the wildlife that lives on the prairie. It's all done from a child's point of view, of course, and from a reader's perspective it's clear that more is going on than that child understands, but this sort of dual vision is done very successfully, I think.

However. This book is genuinely racist. I know, product of its time and so forth, but still. As happy and hardworking and otherwise admirable as Charles and Caroline are, it's damn hard to like them given they're so very frank about stealing land from the native Americans. (Laura raises the odd good point about this, but is basically told to shut up with her questions.) I was really quite delighted when the family had to leave at the end - what goes around comes around, eh? But still, as a snapshot of the good and bad of settler life, it remains an interesting one.